Advances in Customer Engagement Platforms: 2019–20 From isolated CRM to enterprise customer engagement: The evolution of eight leading platforms Publication Date: 26 Sep 2019 | Product code: INT001-000158 Jeremy Cox Advances in Customer Engagement Platforms: 2019–20 Summary Catalyst While customer experience is a top business transformation priority, based on Ovum's ICT Enterprise Insights 2018/19 – Global: ICT Drivers and Technology Priorities study, only around 10% of the 4,889 enterprises surveyed, felt that they could support customer engagement across all channels. Meanwhile customer expectations continue to rise, shaped in part by their positive experiences with internet native businesses, from Amazon through to Uber. Among the many reasons why digital transformation progress is proving painfully and dangerously slow, is a lack of understanding of how the art of the technologically possible, has changed. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications that once promised so much have all too frequently proved disappointing. CRM applications were at best a component or set of components within a broader engagement IT landscape. Over the last few years, however, a new phenomenon has emerged from the ashes of CRM – the customer engagement platform (CEP). In this Market Radar report, we explore CEPs from eight vendors, the advances each has made over the last year, and what we can expect in 2020. The eight vendors included in this report are as follows: . Adobe . bpm'online . Microsoft . Oracle . Pegasystems . Salesforce . SAP . SugarCRM Ovum view This natural evolution from CRM to CEP was signaled by Ovum back in December 2015 in its 2016 Trends to Watch: CRM, report. Nevertheless, the CRM acronym has stubbornly glued itself to the enterprise vernacular, with all its baggage of failed promises. As a front-office system of record, traditional CRM solutions provided limited support for customer engagement. Too often they were used to provide management with the illusion of control through transactional reports and dashboards. They increased the administrative burden of front-line employees, offered minimal insight into the customer experience, motivations, and behaviors. The value was disproportionately weighted towards the enterprise at the expense of the customer and the employee. At long last this is beginning to change. Since Ovum's 2012 report, The Customer-Adaptive Future, it has outlined the critical attributes that any enterprise must exhibit to ensure persistent customer relevance. The delivery of a positive customer experience allied to continuous innovation were essential attributes, to keep customers coming back for more. Above all it required a customer orientation across the entire value chain or network, shared by all employees that creates a systemic ability to create and deliver value. The © Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 2 Advances in Customer Engagement Platforms: 2019–20 benefits derived would be weighted in a symbiotic balance, first by generating value for customers and as a result, for the enterprise and its shareholders. What may have been viewed as an idealistic aspiration in 2012, is today a necessity for continued survival. Across every industry and sector, we are seeing the emergence of new businesses, that can scale rapidly to disrupt the status quo. Speed of transformation is essential, and traditional businesses that understand this, recognize that a coherent approach to customers must be taken – a platform for engagement, that delivers a predictably easy and rewarding experience for customers across any and all channels, physical and digital. This is the key driver behind the evolution from disparate CRM applications applied one department at a time, into an integrated, intelligent customer engagement platform for the enterprise. While all the CEPs are modular and enterprises can continue to take the departmental approach to adoption, it is as a platform that they will create the greatest value in the long run. To meet Ovum's criteria of a CEP fit for an omnichannel environment, orchestration capabilities must span the entire value chain, in conjunction with back-office and any logistics systems. Customer experience is not just about receiving personalized offers or the brand promise. It includes fulfilment of that promise, which is one of the critical drivers behind how the customer feels about the enterprise. Our research found that around 50 vendors claimed to be providers of CEPs, but on closer inspection, these were limited in scope, often to a single department such as marketing or customer service, with no intention of straying beyond these departmental confines. Key messages . The ideal CEP consists of eight technology layers. Get your customer engagement strategy in place first before selecting technology. Adobe extends its reach way beyond the marketing department. bpm'online evolves from CRM to a CEP. Microsoft is well positioned for real-time customer engagement at massive scale. Oracle builds on its data heritage to create an effective CEP. Pega Infinity has an architectural advantage for large-scale high-volume and complex environments. Strategic acquisitions and developments boost Salesforce's digital transformation credentials. SAP C/4HANA is at the vanguard of the intelligent enterprise and permission-based CXM. SugarCRM goes native and transforms into SugarCloud CEP. Recommendations Recommendations for enterprises The pressure on enterprises to transform their customer engagement capabilities is increasing all the time. Progress however is proving elusive for many organizations across industries and every sector. Part of the challenge is to realize that 20th Century CRM thinking is not appropriate in an environment where customers increasingly expect to enjoy frictionless and connected experiences across any channel they choose to use. Research into digital transformation by Dr. Jeanne Ross of the MIT © Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 3 Advances in Customer Engagement Platforms: 2019–20 Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) shows that the most successful organizations are those that develop a platform for customer engagement, rather than those that try to satisfy the internal needs, department-by-department. In this report we highlight the major advances in customer engagement platforms from eight vendors. They are all jockeying for position in this new transformational era, and each has different strengths and areas for improvement. Many enterprises will already have partial platforms in place, having subscribed to different modules provided by these vendors and others. Ovum's advice is to create a unified customer engagement strategy before selecting technology. Customer journey mapping informed by voice of the customer/employee (VoC/VoE) or mystery shopping approaches can help to identify systemic sources of friction or broken processes that aggravate the customer. Once a coherent strategy is in place, it will be much easier to decide whether to add on to existing CRM applications and extend them into CEPs or replace them with CEP. In either case the likelihood is that organizational changes will be required to develop a deeper customer orientation. Speed matters, and there is a huge price to pay for being slow to adapt. Developing a platform fit for customers is a strategic decision and the CEO ultimately owns the challenge. Recommendations for vendors One of the biggest challenges facing vendors is to know when to sell a CEP or a module. A decision to invest in a CEP is strategic not tactical. It is transformational and to avoid fear of lock-in, the vendor must earn the trust of the enterprise customer. These customers will require guidance and support from vendors and their partners, working together. This is an emerging field and vendor support, especially in the early stages will be critical to success. A consultative and knowledgeable sales approach will be essential for any transformational investment in a CEP. This requires people with the broader vision who can understand the entire picture and help the enterprise customer navigate the changes required. As far as technology developments are concerned, data management allied to AI is a critical enabler of a more dynamic and real-time orchestration of the customer experience. Next best action and departmental use cases are a good start but going beyond these "localized" use cases requires a more connected AI environment. Figure 2 highlights the AI maturity from simple to more complex use cases. To really differentiate and succeed in this competitive environment, the winners must aim for dynamic orchestration, as customers will come to expect it. The ideal CEP consists of eight technology layers Definition and characteristics An enterprise CEP enables interactive engagement with customers across any channel or combination of channels customers choose to use, digital and physical, by delivering a contextually relevant and rewarding experience, consistently and securely, to achieve their desired outcomes. From a technology perspective, the aim is to orchestrate relevance throughout every customer journey. Today, this is a work in progress, but that is the aim in the long run. The eight layers consist of the underlying supporting technologies that culminate in the ability to dynamically orchestrate relevance throughout each customer journey. © Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 4 Advances in